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2. I don't think of myself more highly than anybody else. You made a statement, I had a counter point of view, and I gave my opinion.
3. Considering my last company scaled up and was successfully acquired, I think its safe to say in defense of the great team we've had, that they're not shit employees. Say and think what you want but I think its clear you're the person speaking out of anger right now. And don't let your personal anger at me for what I said out of personal opinion be the reason for you to talk smack about the team I've worked with, of which you know nothing about. They don't deserve that. You can think I'm on an ego trip all you want, I'm not.
4. I wasn't trying to give you a lecture. I gave very concise advice on what I personally look for and what I think others (including those I know) look for. Whether you value that opinion or not or believe others look for that or not is up to you. There are many companies out there that will gladly hire the right person base on their personality, culture fit, and skills irregardless of past experience (another advice you can choose to ignore if you like). Seems to me you're bent on this past experience thing base on an assumption rather than trying to see if you'll be able to land the job as a value to the company you'd be applying for.
Whatever the case may be, you can choose to disagree with me all you like. I'm not here to brag or put you down. I merely disagreed with your statement and whether you liked it or not, it's something I stand by.
I much rather have someone be honest with me, tell me they don't know, but that they will do their best to pick things up fast and learn without hindering the team, and work hard at being the best they can be than someone pretending to know something, try to pick up pieces and then still not be great at what they're supposed to know. Honesty goes a long way and I've never turned anyone down because they lack something but I've certainly turn away countless number of people who've lied even the slightest.
BS meters are easier to trigger than you may think. And honestly, there's no integrity if this was ever a passing thought.
Disclaimer: I've hired many people for my own company as well as have a slew of friends who've hired many people for their own companies/startups. This isn't something new.
In Python for example, there's kind of a (mostly) default way of doing it. In other languages, not so much. But that doesn't mean the company culture can't push for something like this (a standard, at least to the extent in which a language permits doing so). Developers performance is more base on how they like working in a language (better to find true language agnostic developers), culture fit, personality, etc...
If you're outsourcing, that's a totally different set of traits and number of things to look for than if you're hiring in house (which I would recommend for the core team and in general anyway; hiring in house that is).
On the other hand, if you're asking flow of code, nuances of particular languages, available libraries, ease of hiring people, etc... to help grow what you're building, then it goes back to the age old language war debate.
On the flip side, as others have said, rechargeable are only good for the first week or two you have them if you use them a lot. The charge doesn't hold after awhile and they suck. The charger and the batteries are expensive compare to the non-rechargeable alternatives.
Don't really think its silly but I find that most people don't call themselves a CEO unless you specifically ask for a title in those situations. It's more common for me to hear people say they're working on a new startup (as opposed to really saying they're exploring an idea).
Titles are meaningless in most cases in startups. We made it a point not to even include titles in our business cards on my last startup. It just doesn't matter.
One of the things that turn most people away, but particularly mentors you want to work with, is the inability to learn and adapt. Most people are completely oblivious to this or completely delusional in thought thinking they're not like that if they are in fact displaying this behavior. Mentors, investors, etc... work with people who are trainable, willing to take advice, execute on the advice, and ask questions when they feel the need to clarify or disagree.
Disagreeing isn't the problem. It's the behavior that a person tends to ask a question only to argue against what they hear. There are a SWARM of people out there like this and they don't even realize it. Other times, the wrong impression is given due to a misunderstand on how a person reacts once advice is given possibly due to how they may phrase a follow up question to the advice. Word choices and gestures matter as to not give off the signal that you're a person bent on looking for validation rather than valid advice. It's a fine line between the two and I dare say most of the people I've encounter can't tell the difference.
I strongly believe that the main reason the author claims he prefers a lifestyle business really boils down to financial reasons and freedom of time associated with running a simple lifestyle business. But if you're in a position where finances are no longer an issue, it boils down to what you really want to do. For me, having been through both and having both do well enough to financially secure me for life, the concept of doing a business to "allow me to live life now" doesn't really apply. I can technically not work by choice and just enjoy life to the maximum extent doing whatever (financially related or not) or do projects on the side to fill up time if that's my hobby.
Instead, I find that I have a tremendous passion in doing startups, where the lifestyle IS the life I want and I don't really care about doing all the other so called "living life now" junk because this is living life at its best in my definition. I am the type that would rather not travel, hit up happy hour, or do other leisurely things in lieu of running my startup doing something cool or what I want to do. I rather focus all my spare time building a startup anyway. So to me, to some extent, it seems like the authors decision is base on the fact that financial, no matter how small of a factor it currently plays, is still a determining factor nonetheless (read associate of time included). The OP can feel free to correct me if this isn't so.
It also doesn't help that it seems the OP only has one startup experience to relate to and its one that didn't succeed (not counting the experience portion; which can be considered success or not separately) and ended up making him and his cofounder split ways (which even on the best of terms and all could still have some influence). Just my two cents.
After all is said and done, it also reflects how many people consider getting into doing a startup under the notion of either not wanting to work for somebody else or because of financial wins, less so because they just have a strong passion for doing startups (similar to people who do open source projects that aren't commercialize to an extent). I'm not saying the OP is like that in any way, but as the old mantra goes, do what you love. And if you love doing startups, freedom/finances isn't going to change your love of the game.
Side Note: I lived in SF for over three years before moving down to the Valley (Mountain View) in favor or startup life over city living. While SF is still very tech centric, in my personal honest opinion, it doesn't hold much of a candle to the Valley itself and majority of the people I've ever talked to arguing in favor of living in SF, are to a large extent, arguing for a life outside of the startup world. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that but the distinction should be made for non-Bay Area residents who may not understand the difference. (Again, personal opinion)
1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hockhafcdegocajmjh...
2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/imeeonmdbakdmilnnc...
Those are the ones I use and they work fairly well. Of course that doesn't actually help stuff like iOS browsing but it doesn't bother me too much.